


Rhythm

by WahlBuilder



Series: As The Old Gods Before Us [5]
Category: Mars: War Logs, The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Technomancers, Cultural Differences, M/M, Technomantic Culture, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 03:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18065402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Zach decides to take up Sean's suggestion, and approach Temperance.





	Rhythm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Children of a Lesser God](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17314571) by [Modlisznik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modlisznik/pseuds/Modlisznik). 



It was a bad idea. Possibly the worst in his life, or ranking among the worst. Why had he even agreed to it? (Because he needed to know. Because Sean had suggested it.)

And why was _he_ not wearing anything?

(There was the — what did they call it? the bodyglove? — but still.)

Zach couldn’t help but compare the two mancers, maybe because they were the only ones to whom he had ever gotten close enough, or maybe because there were so many similarities (but so many differences, too, it was mind-boggling). Sometimes it was difficult to tell them apart despite that they looked nothing alike; and sometimes they were like from different worlds.

But that had been Zach’s observations from a safe distance.

And now he was in Temperance’s proximity.

And felt betrayed by his creature.

(The hum was more intense here — though he had to amend it and call it a purr. The creature liked it, the traitor.)

Why did the bodyglove had to be so form-fitting? _(It is called “bodyglove” for a reason, dumbass.)_ It was almost… _indecent_ , like muscles stripped of skin, though dark gray and silver instead of pale flesh or red.

“I don’t bite. Not without being asked about it first.”

Zach ducked his head, and the collar of his tunic scratched against the bruise on his neck.

“I have only started…” he murmured, hoping to avoid the topic, and added, “Sir.”

“It is ‘Venerable’, if you need, but I’d rather it’s just ‘Temperance’.”

They were away from the camp, and a slight wind was brushing Zach’s face and stroking his back and open arms. Strange, the camp had no wind at all and everyone was complaining about the heat. (Except for the hunter and his hound, somehow, and Sean.)

“Temperance,” he nodded. He felt the need to get deep into the shadows, or better, into the shadows and _up_. He had to tell himself it was nothing, Sean trusted Temperance, and that meant…

That meant precisely nothing, and the creature’s behavior was pushing him closer to the edge. He felt misaligned, and that never ended well.

“I won’t do advanced things with you yet, I just want to get to know you. Do call your creature forth.”

Yeah, easier said than—

He reeled back, clenching his fists (one gloved), the creature all teeth and needles. “How do you know?” He hadn’t told anyone but Sean, and Sean wouldn’t talk, not without asking him first…

_(As though he cares about you.)_

_(Shut up, Sean does.)_

The golden and blue eyes _(he’s such a mu—)_ watched him calmly, and the purring receded. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I don’t mean a threat,” Temperance said. He didn’t move — he didn’t have to, he could kill Zach just with—

_(Stop.)_

That was one fucking unnerving thing out of many: Temperance didn’t move much, not like norm— _most_ people. Sean’s gestures were subtle — but Temperance just didn’t _move_ , save for an occasional tilt of the head, and sometimes if you forgot to watch him, it was as though he simply flicked from one pose to another, without any movement in-between.

“So this is true? You can read thoughts?” As ridiculous as the rumor always seemed…

Temperance smiled. His smile was unnerving, too, like something learned. “Human brain is too complex. There isn’t a screen on the inside of your skull on which your thoughts run like a scroll. I can, if I focus, feel which synapses fire in your brain, but interpreting it? Considering that you not only think, but your brain is also simultaneously performing the many tasks that keep you alive, get input, control output? This is too much for me, so, no, whatever propaganda you were fed, technomancers — even I — can’t read thoughts, though I can influence some things in your brain.”

Zach clasped a hand over his mouth to stifle a yelp when a dagger hovered a few centimeters from Temperance’s temple. Then Temperance plucked it out of the air, as though it was nothing strange, and threw it into the sand.

“Devil’s tits, Ran,” Tenacity drawled, seemingly unimpressed by the fact that the blade he’d just thrown (and what the fuck was that about?!) had been caught in the air. “You are scaring the boy, don’t you see? I though you were supposed to know how to do the teaching-and-preaching thing.”

“I thought I requested that nobody bothers us,” Temperance replied.

Zach’s mind was trying to run a thousand thoughts at the same time, and his heart was pounding. He needed to get back to the camp, to Sean— ‘Ran’? No, ‘ _Rahn_ ’, long, drawled — a challenge.

“Keeping an eye on the boy, you see,” the hunter said. “And you don’t get to order me.”

“Don’t I.”

The purring intensified, turning into growling, just when Tenacity bent to the blade — and charged at Temperance. The mancer moved away — again with that strange flicking quality, except that now he was doing it _while Zach was looking right at him._

Tenacity attacked and Temperance flicked away, again and again, Tenacity surprisingly fast for his bulk — but Temperance even faster, seemingly heedless of his own weight and not even sinking in the sand.

Zach was ready to call for Sean, anyone, someone — when the blade somehow changed hands and the whole scene froze: Tenacity poised on his tiptoes, Temperance pressing the blade to his throat, forcing his chin up.

Tenacity’s chest was heaving, and some of his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.

The hunter licked his lips.

“Strike him, Zachariah,” Temperance said evenly. He was looking at Tenacity.

Zach was trying to wrap his head around all of that when Temperance’s words sank in.

“What.”

“Strike him. Let your creature out.”

He wanted to curl up, to get away — and couldn’t and the creature was growling. “No!”

“Why not? He’s a threat to you, to yours, your Sean, your Yao, everyone. He wouldn’t hesitate before striking _you_.”

Tenacity hissed. “You shit—”

It was cut short by the blade pressing tighter into his throat. Blood welled up.

“Quiet. Zachariah, I’m waiting.”

“No!”

_“Why?”_

“Because he’s helpless!” he cried out, voice cracking, but he didn’t care. He was shaking. “Because he’s not a threat _now_! Please stop!”

“I will kill you,” Tenacity snarled, “for messing with the boy.

“No,” Temperance said evenly. “You won’t.” He stepped away, dropping the knife, and Tenacity caught it. Stroking his throat. There was so much fire in his gray-blue eyes that Zach wondered how Temperance hadn’t turned into a pillar of flames yet.

Temperance answered Tenacity with an unaffected gaze of his own. As though he had a perfect mask instead of his face.

“Are these your teaching methods?” Tenacity growled. He tugged at the neckerchief tied loosely around his throat, and wiped the blood off.

“My teaching methods are not your concern. Leave now.” Temperance turned his back to the hunter—

( _Bad_ idea, the worst, why would he…)

—and the hunter did nothing. Just stared after the mancer, his face twisted. Then, he strode away, gripping the blade.

Zach saw how Temperance turned and watched the hunter leaving.

| 

Temperance smiled. “Nah. Your brain is too complex and it’s doing so many things at once. I can say which parts fire up, but what it means? That’s beyond me. I apologize for scaring you. I can’t read thoughts, Zachariah. I can’t even read faces, to be honest.”

Zach’s panic faded. He felt rather stupid, believing such stories even for a moment. “But aren’t you… You know.” He scraped the sand with his boot. “A priest?”

“You can say that word, it’s not a dirty secret. I am a monk, of a sort, and I do have the necessary training — but not everyone is cut for it. I can get what people mean — just not by reading faces.”

“And what do you do instead?”

It was a strange thing to consider. Zach relied so much on his ability to read people (to get out of trouble or to get in), that to think someone couldn’t do that was… frightening. Impossible. As though to not have hands. He wouldn’t have even considered it before. He tried to imagine the world when you couldn’t even tell whether people around you meant you harm or not, until they tried to _do_ that harm.

Temperance made a few steps.

(Zach noticed that he wasn’t sinking into the sand.)

“What do dances and songs have in common?”

Zach wondered whether sudden changes of topic were an Auroran thing or just Temperance thing. It was pretty engaging, though. To be considered worthy of such a discussion — when Temperance could have it with Sean…

“Melody… Wait. It is rhythm, no?”

Temperance smiled, and the warmth of satisfaction washed over Zach.

“Correct. Though they are not the only things that have rhythm. Your words have rhythm, different rhythms depending on your emotional and physical state; your steps, your pulse have rhythm; the winds, the quakes, stories, textures, solar radiation…” Temperance closed his eyes and tilted his head to the right shoulder. “ _Everything_ has a rhythm.”

Then Temperance looked at him. His eyes seemed to glint on their own. “Your creature has a rhythm, too. You call your technomancy your creature — forgive me, I overheard you talking with Sean.” He pronounced that name funny, not like everyone else. “And that is good. Bond with it, play with it, work with it. Don’t hurt it: it is your responsibility and it would respond to love better than pain, and what a creature would you be yourself if you hurt someone like that?”

Zach’s head was spinning a little, he couldn’t understand anymore whether they were talking about technomancy or...

All things at once.

(Divine, others said of them. _Him_. Temperance. Divine.

Wicked. Abomination. He doesn’t think like anyone else. He holds our lives in his hands. He will ruin us.

His voice brings comfort.)

Zach swallowed. “You sound like Sean.”

“Good. You respond well to him.”

Heat suffused Zach’s face, and Temperance’s chuckle confirmed that he noticed.

Temperance was beautiful. It was not only his looks, not _primarily_ his looks (Sean had a different kind of beauty), not his figure, rather… attractive, with the lines, curves right there, highlighted by the wiring…

It was the joy that made him beautiful. The joy of technomancy. (Not like Sean at all.) The hum-purr, the song, his voice — he was so full of power, and it poured from him and through him without any effort on his part. It just _was_.

Zach was basking in it. He knew, rationally, that just like the light of the Sun, it could turn deadly. But it was more… merciful. Soothing. Maybe not the light, but the shadow, if shadow could pour on its own.

(Like lo—)

“So this is what you do? You learn rhythms?”

“Yeah. I sing them, I dance with them. You didn’t dance that night.”

The night when Sean…

He wanted to drop his face in his hands — just to hide a broad smile. “I dance a little.”

“I could teach you, like I was taught.” Temperance chuckled. “I’m not very good at it, though. Singing fits me more.”

“I can sing, too! A little.”

“A little is enough for a start.”

He frowned. The calm was suddenly dying in his chest.  
  
---|---  
  
“No,” Zach shook his head. “No, I can’t… This is not me, I can’t… I can’t learn from you. I’m not that.”

“And what are you? What are they telling you?”

“No… No…” He was falling into the heat.

Zach buried his face in his hands, trembling. The purring returned, pressing into him, heavy and welcome.

“Try not to let others dictate you what to do and what to be,” Temperance’s voice said close, soft almost. “Regardless of whether they are your commanders, your government, your mentors, whether they claim to divinity — measure them against your conscience. If you can. Do not let them dictate you who you are and what that _who_ is supposed to do.”

“What if… What if I can’t. Can’t fight back.” He felt moisture on his fingers.

The purring wrapped around him like a heavy comforting blanket.

“Try. You have a good heart. Trust it.”

It took him a few moments to compose himself, before he was able to look at Temperance again. There was something sad in the mismatched eyes — but perhaps it was the blurriness in Zach’s own.

“You are cr—” He shut his mouth, and looked away, cheeks burning. He stroked the glove with his right hand, pinched wires.

“Crazy,” Temperance finished. “I know.”

Shame scraped at Zach.

“They say that to me, and about me, often. Just like people say one thing about you, don’t they? A rogue, a cheat… All variations of one.”

This hit close again, and he wished… No, no, he had to call the creature back, it couldn’t bite.

(Sean would be disappointed if it did.)

He moved his hands closer to his chest — but they were caught by Temperance.

(He was so close.)

(He wasn’t as tall as Sean.)

(He smelled like metal and storms.)

There were speckles of rusty red in Temperance’s eyes — _me_ , Zach realized. His own reflection, in the camo of the unit. The purring was so warm, like being held in an embrace. Like the whole world was humming a song.

“They define you as one thing that they can use,” Temperance said. “But you are not one thing.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I know.”

“Don’t let them force you to forget it. Resist. Resist. For yourself, for _him_ , for the child you were.” He stepped away. “You need rest. Come to me if you wish to continue, or just to talk. Or to sing.”

He staggered away, wiping his cheeks. The blanket-pressure lingered, the world quietly humming. Around him, in him, through him.


End file.
